Iron Man

My design for Iron Man comes from a concept of a large variety of Iron Man suits including the likes of the Hulkbuster and the Silver Centurion. This accompanied by the designs of medieval armour and a futuristic armour called TALOS being produced for US Marines came together to create a design to work off for my Iron Man. The idea itself is influenced from blueprint designs and more prominently a scene from the first Iron Man film where Tony Stark layers his missile designs over each other revealing the plans for the first Iron Man armour when flattened out. To create this piece successfully I has to think realistically about how the suit would be assembled. I focused my research on how the films and cartoons have portrayed the action along with how technicians have created their own Iron Man technology using mechanics and lasers as such. These pieces where created using 3 sheets of acetate taped to paper, starting with a drawing on paper using pencil, followed by a marker pen on acetate and finished in colour using acrylic paint.

The Flash

The Flash motion test 1.
I was trying to find the best way of displaying a sense of movement through these pieces so I first tried smudging chalk pastels in an attempt to create a blur effect, but I lost a lot of detail through this and in trying to bring that detail back the piece looked too illustrative.

The Flash motion test 2.
My second experiment was to produce a movement drawing using my model's running motion I captured in a video and screen shotted almost like an animation run cycle overlaying the image and painting it with acrylic paints. I got a closer result to what I was after but it still wasn't guite right.

The Flash motion test 3.
My most succesful piece, this painting I used heavy expressive brush strokes and a pallete knife to showcase the movement of The Flash. I added stroked to all the movement the body would make running rather than just spreading the paint to one side. You can see this in the arm on the left how the arm's movement is a different motion to everywhere else

The Punisher

The Punisher 3
Created using Charcoal and Indian Ink on A3 Cartrdge paper.
The reference behind my Punisher design is taking the character back to his routes as a US marine kitting him out in marine body armor but with a black urban styling and a painted on skull.
This piece I like but isn't as good as the second or third, the face was my point of priority for this piece because I like how the light captured the model just right to the point where he looked very sinister and with the smirk added it takes you into the mentality of The Punisher in him taking pleasure in his work

Created using Charcoal and Indian Ink on A3 Cartrdge paper.
The reference behind my Punisher design is taking the character back to his routes as a US marine kitting him out in marine body armor but with a black urban styling and a painted on skull.
This one is to reflect the skull on Castle's own face to show that if the skull emblem is what signifies The Punisher, then the emblem inside him declares he IS The Punisher and it's not just a matter of symbols.

The Punisher 4
Created using Charcoal and Indian Ink on A3 Cartrdge paper.
The reference behind my Punisher design is taking the character back to his routes as a US marine kitting him out in marine body armor but with a black urban styling and a painted on skull.
This is my second favourite, I wanted to play about a bit with the setting and working from my photo there was a lot of blank space that I could easily transform into a setting and I wanted to actually place the character somewhere he would fit in.

The Punisher 2
Created using Charcoal and Indian Ink on A3 Cartrdge paper.
The reference behind my Punisher design is taking the character back to his routes as a US marine kitting him out in marine body armor but with a black urban styling and a painted on skull.
This is my favorite of the pieces, it is a good example of all three elements that make my Punisher together. My model is drawn well and is a good resemblance, the armor is prominent and minus the skull is a good representation of a soldier and then the Skull itself separates him from just a soldier and shows that it is The Punisher.

Thor and Loki Linoprints

My first two pieces were re-designs of Thor and Loki taking their comic book interpretation back to their Norse mythology/ viking routes with some of their comicbook elements still there.
For these I looked at viking wear and armour, busts and artwork based on the description of the norse gods along with their original designs

round up meetings and connections

Hey, I haven't really been updating the blog as regularly as usual due to my work mainly being done in my book and expanding onto Facebook pages, Meetings and Connections is finished so I'll provide a visual summary of my unit of work.

 

Wolverine 1
This piece was done on textured wallpaper using black acrylic paint and a dry brush technique influenced by Japanese paintings. I then coloured the piece with inks trying to stick to flat colours

Wolverine 2

Thing (relief).
This piece was done on a thick wooden board, I started this piece by just smashing a red brick to bits (took a while) I then glued the rubble on in a mosaic sort of assembly using hot glue for the big stone and pva for dust and small rubble. once dry I painted some tone into the form to give the piece a figure (it's quite difficult to make out in the photo) I painted using acrylic and for the rest of the piece it's just a simple painting of blues with white and dark tones. the texture on the background was a result of thickly applied acrylic which just gave the black section something interesting.

 

Mr Freeze
This painting was done using acrylics on A3 Canvas. My main focus on this piece was to get the snow texture right and I looked at crackle effects. I created the initial background by dragging a wire brush along a white and blue canvas and then flicking paint onto the background, I then painting as usual on top of the background and the surface works really well. For the gun spray I used some textured pads dipped in paint and just dabbed 

 

Clayface.
Clayface is the product of heavily added acrylic paints, Dry acrylic waste glued on and all spread with a big brush and pallet knife. My aim for this piece was to create something with a heavy texture and my research was mainly into how mud and water flows and the patterns left in dry mud. This was an expressive piece

 

Superman 1
Superman I knew would be a challenging re-design, I had to keep the key factors of the character, meaning the colour scheme, the bright colours and the sense of invincibility. You can't dress someone in the Superman costume if they are going to look uncomfortable and weak in it so I needed to enforce a sense of pride into how I posed my figure. For the costume design I looked into Spartan wear, because they had pretty much the same design, muscular, barely dressed and large flowing capes. I wanted the large cape of a Spartan warrior to give my Superman the power, I replaced the tall boots with Spartan greaves to give the character a sense of uniform and again enforcing the warrior aspect. I needed my character to work in a real world. I gave his cape a pin of the Superman shield and as for the main shield itself, I wanted to create a beacon for Superman, an idea of seeing that symbol enforcing hope so I looked into glowing paints and neon paints and I settled with using the Alex Ross Kingdom Come shield design and spray painting red neon paint over a stencil to give it the glow and vibrancy I wanted to draw attention.
The building in the background is a quick painting of the Hilton hotel in Manchester.
I originally painted this in Gouache but was informed of the draw backs so I painted over in acrylic, for some texture I added some salt crystals to my work.

superman 2

Final Piece

 

Captain America Poster
(YOU too can be a HERO just like Cap)
This painting is a mixed media piece through predominantly paints. I based the designs on American World War 2 propaganda posters and the theme behind the piece is how their use of patriotism and symbolism hid the true brutality of war. The poster uses heroism and inspiration which would appear positive to any passer by however in the detail of the piece you notice the 'in-your-face' patriotism is drawing the attention away from the wounded and dead in the background, dangers of land mines, decapitation and overall death looms behind what looks to be an inspirational motif. All done on A1 cartridge paper with acrylic paints and oil pastels and black felt tip for detail.

 Red Skull Poster
'Du Sind Erfrderlich. Marsch! (You are needed. March!)'
This piece contrasts well with the Captain America poster visually. The colours are flatter and more simple and follow the general colour scheme of German war posters. This poster is a more aggressive poster than the Captain America one, focusing on Power, Ego, Strength and using this intimidation on the viewer in a threatening demand of "You are needed. March!" in a most unpleasant way of asking for help. In relation to comic books this piece draws from the Cosmic Cube/ Tesseract acting as the Red Skull's weapon, a Hydra agent as he would be interpreted in Nazi uniform and two prototype Nazi aircraft's which I found that looked very space agey and advanced for technology of the time. Again this piece is mixed media although more of a painting, A1 cartridge paper with Acrylic paints and a black marker pen for the text.

Research into Japanese art, dry brush and culture

For my Wolverine piece that I'm working on at the moment, I am looking into Japanese art and tradition, Dry Brush technique and culture of Japan.

Dry Brush

I really like the style of dry brush and I often use it in my paintings to give some texture to the piece but because of what I've seen of japanese dry brush I've seen that the art is fairly minimalist in that there is no background and the subject matter lets some of the subject matter through. The color pallets are very limited in that they are predominately only a few colors, black and white. They are also painted on a textured type of paper so I will see what I can find and if unsuccessful cartridge paper will suffice.

Each genuine piece of art that's come from an oriental country has a red stamp of approval to show which region it comes from. I won't use this in my work because I consider it would be disrespectful 

seeing as that I am not a traditional Japanese artist and it hasn't actually come from the place.